In contrast when it comes to religion you have thousands to choose from and on top of that, countless interpretations on each one of them, so you can feel overwhelmed.

Not really. If you examine the underlying structures of most religions you will quickly realise that they fall into a small number of categories. Hinduism, Buddhism, and most animistic faiths have a fairly pick-and-choose attitude; Islam, Orthodox Judaism and some pagan faiths have an extremely authoritarian rule set; and Christianity stands apart and alone in all aspects. Furthermore, you're going to find that most religions, including Judaism, rely on propitiation through sacrifices rather than any sort of personal relationship with a deity. Again, Christianity stands alone here.

They already have a system of restrictions that allows them to not have to think how to act in every situation. E.g 'It's the lord's day so I will rest' as opposed to an atheist who has to think about how much he works, whether or not he should do something about work the next day and a myriad of other things.

The difference between an atheist and a religious person is that the atheist has to justify every single one of his ideas from first principles – which most of the time do not exist or are easily disproven. The religious person, by contrast, can always resort to the argument that his way comes from a Power far beyond human understanding.

The true test of any faith is whether or not its first principles stand up to rational scrutiny. As I've pointed out before, the Ten Commandments are irreducible; you cannot get rid of any one Commandment, but you need no more than ten, to create a just society. The reason why Jesus added the greatest Commandment was not to contradict or replace the Decalogue, but to push from a just society to a moral one.

No other faith can claim to have an irreducible and perfect set of Commandments.

atheists lean too much on the side of free expression and tend to swing to extreme hedonistic behaviour or allowing every conceivable freedom to occur which ironically oppresses or harms others

Or strip away freedom completely, because there is nothing stopping them from doing so. It is not coincidental that the most murderous regimes in history have always been atheistic in their creeds and outlooks.

Which one teaches the right morals? Which one would ensure that the next generation is not going to become a death cult like Islam?

Being free from choosing religion can also make things complicated though. Now you have to learn how to introduce new systems to teach morality. You have to spent a lot of time understanding how to be fully human, which means knowing how your mind works. You have to learn how to cope with anxiety by learning how to manipulate your body and your mind, which takes a lot of time and effort. Religious people mostly outsource their willpower to God. Prayer helps them focus their minds and build mental endurance. They already have a system of restrictions that allows them to not have to think how to act in every situation. E.g 'It's the lord's day so I will rest' as opposed to an atheist who has to think about how much he works, whether or not he should do something about work the next day and a myriad of other things.

Religion brings more mental comfort which can sometimes be bad, because it can lead to herd mentality, which can make good people act in bad ways. On the other hand, atheists use too much critical thinking. If you instruct an atheist to breathe in the love of God while meditating in the morning he will look at you like alien. But whether or not you believe that you get some sort of energy from God, does not not matter since it has multiple times the effect on your neurology as opposed to the standard experience.

I do think that atheists cannot disprove the existence of God(s), but that does not stop them from arguing that it is far too oppressive. While that may be true for many people, atheists lean too much on the side of free expression and tend to swing to extreme hedonistic behaviour or allowing every conceivable freedom to occur which ironically oppresses or harms others. E.g gay pride parade are nothing but degenerate behaviour that poisons the minds of young impressionable kids.

We can go on and on about religion vs non-religion, but I think a more sane approach is to combine both. At the end of the day, what matters is the impact that you leave on this world. You want to be able to think critically and at the same time incorporate different mindsets on society that run on autopilot, but can be tweaked from time to time so they can be improved. I was at both ends of the spectrum. I was deeply religious growing up and then I gave it up and proclaimed myself as an atheist. Too extreme on both cases. I can definitely smell the bullshit from both sides, but I can also pick the best of both at the same time.

Yep. That was certainly a blind spot of mine when I was an atheist. I just didn't WANT to believe in God. I concluded based on my "extensive experience" at the time that there was overwhelming evidence against the existence of gods in general and God in particular – without ever stopping to realise that it's literally impossible to prove a negative. It was pure arrogance on my part and there are many times these days where I find myself wishing I could travel back in time to slap my 13-year-old self silly for believing in such nonsense.

That arrogance is a fatal flaw, and it manifested itself quite clearly in Dr. Stephen Hawking in particular. He basically said that he reckoned it was possible for the Universe to create itself without God's help:

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

That is pure intellectual arrogance, right there. The man had the brilliance and brainpower to figure out how black holes work and to prove that the Universe has never contracted but has only expanded since the Big Bang, and then he went and uttered THAT lot of nonsense.

That's what always gets me. I mean, there is no proof, but billions of pieces of evidence for the existence of god, but absolutely zero evidence for the NONexistence of God… and yet they consider disbelieving god to be 'reasonable'

Atheists: religiously refusing to believe in gods since 1883.

Didact, you have a gift. Namely, the ability to say in seven pages what I can say in a couple paragraphs 😉

That's a good line. I'll have to remember that one.

Which I believe is exactly where Nietzsche wound up.

Correct. At the time he was diagnosed with "tertiary syphilis" – which is to say, the man who declared that "God is dead" was so depressed by the thought that he went and boinked a poxy whore.

That diagnosis has since been challenged, but I kind of prefer that story. It's a lot funnier.

No matter how you spin it, to have ANY opinion in Atheism requires that you have a religious conviction in the nonexistence of God.

The problem with atheism is that it didn't develop in a vacuum. There is no place on Earth that isn't touched by some sort of religion, however crude. Atheists intend to topple over these religions and place themselves in their stead, but simple (I fucking love) science tells you that you can't remove a pillar and replace it with something weaker and expect the structure to stand. If you're going to go through the trouble of revolution, the replacement has to be as good or better than the original. Atheism has major flaws, one of them being, as you mentioned, hope. There's also the problem that it's "reasoning" is cut off to children and those of lower IQ. For the vast majority of people, there's no meaning to be found in atheism, nihilism and all its offshoots.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to replace a system of deep meaning and good works with nothingness deserves the funny farm. Which I believe is exactly where Nietzsche wound up.